Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

R.I.P.

05-24-2012

to

06-20-2012

All Hail the Queen

A couple weeks ago, I decided to make a Savra, Queen of the Golgari deck. That’s a bit random, for me, but there were a few reasons why I chose to go this route. First off, I just really wanted a deck that could play both Soul of the Harvest and Harvester of Souls. I believe I already demonstrated my odd love of dichotomy with the Vish Kal life/death deck, but the mirror-image pair of these two creatures just really appeals to me – partly because I love the aforementioned dichotomy of being opposite, yet the same. Also, they both draw me cards, which you all know by now I am powerless to resist! Playing creatures and killing creatures and drawing cards for both! What’s not to love.

Another bit of tech I had in mind that also drew me further into the B/G pair was this little trio:

Necrotic Ooze + Griselbrand + Sophic Centaur.

Okay, you probably see the first two and think, “yawn…” but then Sophic Centaur? What the hell even IS a Sophic Centaur? Well, folks, it’s a Spellshaper that gains us two life for each card in our hand… so now you see where I’m going with this, right? Dump both into the graveyard, drop Necrotic Ooze, and proceed to draw a  buttload of cards off the Ooze while then also using the same Ooze to gain twice that in life!

Say we still have 40 life when we pull off this play. We can pay 35 life to draw 35 cards, leaving us at 5 life. Then we pay four, tap the Ooze and gain somewhere in the ballpark of 70 life. At this point we can easily draw the entire rest of our library and still have some life left over. Of course, we’d deck ourselves in the process. I considered going with Damia to include a Laboratory Maniac combo win, but someone in my group already has a Lab Maniac/Damia deck, and it’s pretty cool but I didn’t want to steal his thunder by doing the same thing only way more broken (and probably, to be fair, kinda boring).

Now, we don’t actually need to draw 35 cards most of the time. Usually drawing 7 or 14, then gaining 20 to 30 life, or thereabouts, will be more than enough – but the potential for that kind of absurdity is still pretty compelling, no?

Anyway, I already have a prototype of the deck put together, but it was mostly just strung together from a bunch of different thought-processes, and has some problems with its various themes meshing well together. It does pretty much everything I want it to, just not well enough for my liking and has a bit of difficulty in establishing  a clear game plan early on.

I turned to the interwebs for help, as most of us do when stumped. The EDH forums were my first stop, as usual, but after doing a forum search for Savra decklists, none that I found really inspired me. Most looked solid enough, but didn’t really have room for the themes and tech I had in mind. The, while searching the Dear Azami archives at starcitygames.com, I came across this list.

This was a list I could really get behind. I liked that it was designed to be as mean and competitive as possible - that meant I could start with a really strong, powerful list, and just scale back on the “douchebaggery” until I felt it was acceptable for my particular playgroup. I admired what the deck was built to achieve even if some of the specific cards and tactics were a bit too underhanded. Contagion locks? Not cool. I appreciate the effectiveness, but it’s not conducive to a fun time with friends. Still the framework of the deck, overall, looked far more powerful than most lists I’d looked at, and more importantly, seemed much more readily adapatable to what I had in mind. To put it simply, I’d have to change less about this list to get it where I wanted it than other lists I’d seen.

It was a bit outdated, in that it was designed and published well before Griselbrand was a thing, but it had much of the other “tech” I’d envisioned, such as the Bloodghast/Perilous Forays combo and a central Birthing Pod chain substrategy. These were just a couple of things I’d already considered when trying to assemble a list on my own, so to see all this stuff in one list? Perfect!

Except it wasn’t perfect, of course. I definitely had to put my own spin on things. Tune down the more dickish stuff, pump up the card drawing power a bit, and of course squeeze in the stupid Griselbrand stuff. First, let’s trim the deck back a bit, shall we?

From creatures, I made the following cuts:

Reassembling Skeleton: Redundancy with Bloodghast is cool, but since I’m not going for Contamination lock, I feel I only really need ‘ghast.

Withered Wretch: Not so much cut, just swapped out for Scavenging Ooze (I have the $40 card, might as well play it, right?)

Phyrexian Plaguelord: There was a time when cutting this guy from a B/G deck seemed downright heretical. But, I don’t think he’s actually critical here. Still probably good, but not critical. Right now that’s all that matters.

Skeletal Vampire: Fits the theme along both axis –tokens AND sacrificing. Just a bit too expensive to be reliable, in my opinion.

Sheoldred, Whispering One: A great card, and a great fit, but something has to become Griselbrand, and I want to cut from the high-end of the curve for him. Once Griselbrand gets the banhammer (seems likely to me), Sheoldred has a good chance of coming back in.

Hermit Druid: Again, not really cut, but replaced by similarly-functioning Fauna Shaman. Tutoring for creatures seems more important to me, plus Druid is a bit too “easy mode” for my tastes. Starts to feel too much like a dirty combo deck with him in it.

Mitotic Slime: Another fine card, I’d be happy to play this if I had room… but I don’t.

Mycoloth: I dislike putting all my eggs in one basket. This “basket” always ends up getting Path to Exiled or something.

Skullmulcher: Subpar inclusion is subpar. This is a straight swap-out for Soul of the Harvest.

Rampaging Baloths: Another terrific card, but one I can live without.

Kamahl, Fist of Krosa: His main function here is to wipe out opponents’ lands in response to sweepers or Massacre Wurms. Not fun.

Grave-shell Scarab: Always tried to make this guy work, but he usually just underperformed by a significant margin.

From the non-creature sections, I cut the following:

Contamination: Dick move.

Attrition: Good, but probably overkill, plus I see a lot of Black in my metagame.

Phyrexian Arena: A great card, but I wonder why you’d ever include this in a Savra deck over, say, Graveborn Muse or Bloodgift Demon? In my case, though, I’m making this into Harvester of Souls.

Syphon Mind: Card draw is NOT going to be an issue, I think. Plus I don’t want people discarding fatties to this when I have Living Death in the deck…

Diabolic Tutor: Swapped out for Vampiric Tutor – it’s just miles better.

Liliana Vess: Fine choice, but I have other plans for this slot…

Exsanguinate: My group is already just sick of this card, especially in conjunction with Coffers/Urborg.

Death Cloud: I’ve been thinking a long time about trying this card out, but I don’t think this is the deck to do it in.

Explore: becomes Sakura-Tribe Elder. I’m convinced STE is just better anyway, but when our deck has a Sacrifice theme? One of these cards is synergistic with Grave Pact, the other isn’t… you do the math.

Life from the Loam: I think we probably want lands going into the graveyard, not coming out of it.

Natural Affinity: I love the idea of following this spell with Massacre Wurm. My friends might not love it nearly as much….

Explosive Vegetation: Meh, ramp is important, but I’d rather have something else… maybe Realms Uncharted?

Garruk Wildspeaker: I’m going with the G/B Garruk just because this is the only deck I have that can run him at the moment.

Lurking Predators: Great card, but… Spoiler: I’m also cutting Top.

Necrogenesis: Meh. If I think I need more GY hate, I’ll throw Withered Wretch back in. The tokens are nice, but, unimportant.

Grim Feast: Cute card, but not super important. I have better plans in mind for the life gain…

Sensei’s Divining Top: Meh.

Helm of Possesion: Cut only because I don’t have one, plus I needed a slot for Mimic Vat. So this is now Mimic Vat.

So, after cutting all of these cards, then adding in the things I already said were direct swaps, I have 17 slots available. I want to bump the land count up to 37 (36 is cutting it close, even with the ramp). And I want the appropriate Signet. That’s 15 slots to go.

I already know I need to add Sophic Centaur as part of the “combo” with Grizzelbees. The other life-gainer I wanted to add is Sword of War and Peace. Once we have our huge hands, this gains us tons of life too, but it’s a good enough card to stand on its own merits. Since we’re on the theme of equipment, Sword of Feast and Famine is also more than good enough to justify its inclusion as a “good stuff” card.

We’ve already got Fauna Shaman and Birthing Pod, but I’m gonna say f--- it and throw Survival of the Fittest in the mix. Sure, some of you might cry foul that I dissed Hermit Druid for being too combo-y and “easy mode” but, where Hermit Druid it a blunt hammer, Survival is a surgical knife.

Since I mentioned it earlier, I’ll go ahead and try Realms Uncharted, see if it works out okay. Seems good with Worm Harvest.

I also want to err on the side of caution for now, so I’m gonna add a bit more spot removal. Beast Within and Putrefy are great Instant-speed answers that don’t rely on trickery like having Grave Pact in play, etc. Meanwhile Shriekmaw is too good and potentially synergistic to pass up. All three go in.

For some early defense, I find Vampire Nighthawk do be vastly underrated. In.

Another good defensive card is Sudden Spoiling, which is fine on it's own (just because no one ever really sees it coming) but also combos nicely with Massacre Wurm to be a Plague Wind with life loss thrown in for kicks.

I cut some of our “army in a can” token-makers, so I need to restore that segment of the deck with some choice I just happen to prefer over the initial inclusions. Bloodline Keeper is a bit slow, but very powerful once he gets going. Plus he’s just a badass vampire. Also, Nath of the Gilt-leaf can be decent on his own, or combo with Sadistic Hypnotist to nuke all of my opponents’ hands at once.

I simply cannot build an EDH deck without Duplicant, so he’s in.

Finally, we have just 4 slots left. Two of them automatically go to Beacon of Unrest and Profane Command – they’re two of my favorite Black spells and I never leave home without them! Both happen to actually matter in this deck, as Beacon is always good when our Plan A involves killing every single creature that hits the table (except our own, of course). Profane Command is both a generally versatile and powerful spell, but also a key replacement for Exsanguinate as a mana dump.

Just because I want another big, stupid game-ending bomb, I’m going to try out It That Betrays. He just fits too well with the Sacrifcing theme going on in the deck, plus there’s a narrow chance we can reanimate him into play early game.

Finally, to add some more reliability, I’m going to add Dimir House Guard. We already have a number of tutors, but DHG gets a number of very important spells, most notably Grave Pact, Necro Ooze and Creekwood Liege, just for starters. If that isn’t needed, he’s just a good sac outlet. The number of times in my Magic history that I’ve gone: “Play House Guard, sac everything, Living Death” is just absurd, so he’s another card I almost never exclude from any deck that can play him.

That leaves us room for 37 lands. I pretty much ignored the mana base in the list above, and rebuilt it from scratch, though I expect there will be significant overlap between his list and mine.  The tough part, for me, was reigning in my love of non-Basic lands. We need plenty of Basics for the Bloodghast+Perilous Forays engine to be worth running, so I wanted to make sure not to hamstring that key pieces of tech. Here’s what I came up with along with the full decklist:

Creatures
Savra, Queen of the Golgari

Bloodghast
Fleshbag Marauder
Vampire Nighthawk
Dimir House Guard
Sangromancer
Bloodline Keeper
Necrotic Ooze
Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
Sadistic Hypnotist
Shriekmaw
Grave Titan
Harvester of Souls
Massacre Wurm
Butcher of Malakir
Griselbrand

Sakura-Tribe Elder
Scavenging Ooze
Fauna Shaman
Eternal Witness
Yavimaya Elder
Sophic Centaur
Genesis
Mitotic Slime
Acidic Slime
Soul of the Harvest
Primeval Titan
Avenger of Zendikar

Creakwood Liege
Vulturous Zombie
Nath of the Gilt-Leaf

Duplicant
It That Betrays

Spells
Vampiric Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Barter in Blood
Sudden Spoiling
Grave Pact
Living Death
Beacon of Unrest
Decree of Pain
Profane Command

Survival of the Fittest
Beast Within
Cultivate
Kodama's Reach
Realms Uncharted
Birthing Pod
Scapeshift
Greater Good
Perilous Forays

Putrefy
Garruk Relentless
Worm Harvest

Sol Ring
Golgari Signet
Ashnod's Altar
Spawning Pit
Mimic Vat
Skullclamp
Nim Deathmantle
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Feast and Famine

Lands
Overgrown Tomb
Twilight Mire
Golgari Rot Farm
Woodland Cemetery
Llanowar Wastes
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Cabal Coffers
Bojuka Bog
Dakmor Salvage
Volrath's Stronghold
Temple of the False God
Reliquary Tower
Phyrexian Tower
Grim Backwoods
High Market
Verdant Catacombs
Terramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Barren Moor
Tranquil Thicket
7x Swamp
8x Forest

That’s pretty much the deck. I expect I will need to tweak things here and there. I don’t know if I have too little removal, or too much. The number of tutors might make it “consistent” or they might make it “repetitive”. Consistent is fine, but repetitive is boring and predictable, and become easier to beat the more my group plays against it. It That Betrays might be an awesome game-ender or it might just be overcosted chaff. Sadistic Hypnotist will almost certainly break backs and win games, but might make someone flip the table in rage (it has that effect on me, so...).

Also, I wanted to find room for Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble to supplement the whole “killing you while I kill your creatures” angle. I will playtest and tweak accordingly, but those a just a few of the things I really want to try and add at some point. It just involves getting some games in to see what works and what doesn’t.

Enjoy!

Maelstrom Wanderer

Planechase II is out now, and of course the very first thing I did once I bought the decks was to sleeve up a Maelstrom Wanderer deck. Well, actually, I put the deck together last week, and just used placeholders for the new cards I wanted to add, like MW himself and Etherium-Horn Sorcerer.

I've already played the list quite a bit this weekend, and I have made a few changes based off those games. There are still a few more I'd like to make, but for now, this is the list I'm running.

General
Maelstrom Wanderer

Creatures
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Djinn of Wishes
Consecrated Sphinx
Deadeye Navigator
Frost Titan

Flametongue Kavu
Kik-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Spitebellows
Charmbreaker Devils
Inferno Titan
Tyrant of Discord

Sakura-Tribe Elder
Wood Elves
Eternal Witness
Acidic Slime
Primeval Titan
Avenger of Zendikar

Coiling Oracle
Winged Coatl
Bloodbraid Elf
Izzet Chronarch
Riku of Two Reflections
Intet the Dreamer
Etherium-Horn Sorcerer

Solem Simulacrum
Duplicant

Spells
Mystical Tutor
Foresee
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Rite of Replication
Treachery
Bribery
Devastation Tide
Time Spiral
Temporal Mastery

Chandra, the Firebrand
Mass Mutiny
Reforge the Soul
Warstorm Surge
Blasphemous Act
Bonfire of the Damned

Worldly Tutor
Plummet
Beast Within
Cultivate
Kodama's Reach
Skyshroud Claim
Garruk Wildspeaker
Greater Good
Lurking Predators
Tooth and Nail

Hull Breach
Prophetic Bolt
Vengeful Rebirth

Sol Ring
Coalition Relic
Sensei's Divining Top
Scroll Rack
Crystal Ball
Crystal Shard
Proteus Staff
Temporal Aperture

Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Vesuva
Evolving Wilds
Scalding Tarn
Misty Rainforest
Stomping Ground
Steam Vents
Breeding Pool
Fire-Lit Thicket
Cascade Bluffs
Flooded Grove
Rootbound Crest
Sulfer Falls
Hinterland Harbor
Gruul Turf
Izzet Boilerworks
Simic Growth Chamber
Halimar Depths
High Market
Desolate Lighthouse
Alchemist's Refuge
Temple of the False God
Forest x5
Island x4
Mountain x4

Overview
The deck is remarkably fun, powerful and easy to play. Basically, your default strategy is going to be:
1. Ramp to eight
2. Cast Maelstrom Wanderer

In a nutshell, that's all you need to do most of the time. Fortunately the deck can easily play a more intricate game, if need be. I have loaded up on ways to manipulate the top few cards of the library, to set up our Cascade to our liking. Since I was going down that road, I figured I'd also double up on ways to take advantage of that top-deck manipulation. Stuff like Lurking Predators, Djinn of Wishes and the Miracle spells are all additional ways to cheat stuff into play or cast spells for less mana.

The rest of the deck is mostly made up of Ramp (very important!), a little Draw power, some big splashy spells, and a dash of utility stuff. A deck like this usually wins by making bigger, splashier plays than it's opponents, but sometimes an opponent will be able to trump us, so it's important to keep some cheap removal and other essential utility effects in the deck.

I haven't quite found the ideal balance yet - I feel like a need more cheap, early-game cards for when I don't draw lots of ramp, but I also don't want to include too many of these cheap spells because paying 8 mana for MW and hitting a coulple of do-nothing, two-mana spells is a bummer.

Based on how often I have to mulligan with this deck, I know I need to up the land count a bit. Ideally I think the deck really needs 2 more lands and probably a Darksteel Ingot or something, to be more reliable and stable, but at this point I don't know what to cut.

There are a number of things I'd really love to add, as well, such as:

Snapcaster Mage
Sphinx of Uthuun
Seedborn Muse
Keiga, the Tide Star
Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Pongify
Knowledge Exploitation

I've debated and gone back and forth on whether to put Momir Vig, Simic Visionary in the deck. At this point, I think it might make the deck a little too repetative and less fun. I enjoy using Scroll Rack to set up epic Cascade chains, but I also like just casting MW blind and seeing what random goodies my deck gives me!

Anyway, Maelstrom Wander is a powerhouse, and if you like really big, swingy, game-breaking plays then you'll likely enjoy this deck. I'm already very happy with this deck - it's one of the best decks I've assembled in a while, and I can't wait to play it some more.

Enjoy.

Firegain

The R/W color pair is typically notable for its blazingly fast aggro decks. This is a slower, more meditative take on the Boros archetype. The backbone of the deck is the build-around-me rare from Ravnica, Searing Meditation (the other key card used to be Firemane Angle, which is where the name of the deck comes from). I actually piloted a version of this deck to some success in FNM tournaments, as it was a direct answer to the nearly 100% aggro metagame at the time. Everyone was playing Zoo, so I figured a deck that was basically 90% lifegain and removal would do well… it did.

This iteration of the deck is considerably different from my previous builds. It basically takes the “Soul Sisters” archetype made famous by Conley Woods, and splashes Red for Searing Meditation and Lightning Helix. Here’s the list:

4x Soul Warden

3x Soul’s Attendant

4x Ajani’s Pridemate

3x Wall of Reverance

3x Serra Ascendant

1x Reveillark

3x Ajani’s Mantra

4x Recumbant Bliss

4x Lightning Helix

4x Searing Meditation

3x Survival Cache

4x Kabira Crossroads

3x Clifftop Retreat

3x Rugged Prairie

8x Plains

6x Mountain

As you can see, nearly everything in the deck gains you life. The few exceptions are there to turn all that life gain into something we can actually win with. Ajani’s Pridemate gets HUGE, while Searing Meditation slings targeted burn around like it was nothing.

The important facet of the deck is knowing when to use your one-shot life gain effects like Helix or Cache. Usually you want to burn these early to control the board and help your Pridemates get bigger. You don’t usually need or want to wait on Searing Meditation to appear before using these. The early turns should be played fairly aggressively – ideally, you’d go turn 1 Warden, turn 2 Pridemate, turn 3 Helix a blocker and swing. From there you develop based on how you draw, and what your opponents are doing – if you can, keep playing aggro as long as it’s reasonably safe and profitable to do so.

Once you have a Searing Meditation online, you can then easily play a more controlling game, buring threats with Meditation, or if they’re too big to shoot down, just plop a Recumbant Bliss on ‘em and start using that lifegain trigger to start shooting your opponents directly.

Reveillark is pretty obvious, as it can recur every other creature in the deck. I’d like to add more copies, but frankly, I’ve managed to win games with zero creatures on the board, by going full-on with multiple Searing Meditation triggers. So, for now I think one Lark is enough to help us in a pinch.

Dropping Serra Ascendant on turn 1 isn’t usually the best play, which is why there are only 3x copies. Of course, it’s still better than no play, so I still make it, in the absence of other options.

The biggest question mark in the deck is Ajani’s Mantra, as it really only matters when you manage to stick either a Pridemate or a Meditation. You could easily replace them with more copies of stuff in the deck, or just throw in some Lightning Bolts or whatever. A couple Day of Judgement would be advisable if you find yourself not quite able to keep up with creature-based offensives.

Planar Deck

Goldmeadow (The tokens are great for triggering Wardens)

Fields of Summer (Duh)

Minamo (Dig for those Searing Meditations!)

Naar Isle (With so much life gain, it’ll hurt us WAY less)

Sea of Sand (Ditto)

Bloodhill Bastion (Just ‘cause it makes Serra Ascendant terrifying)

Kilnspire District (Gives us more mana to fuel our Meditations)

Astral Arena (Usually we’re only attacking with Pridemate anyway)

Aretopolis (Life gain and card draw, both relevant and useful)

Kharasha Foothills (Make the most out of our very limited number of attackers)

The planes here mostly just reinforce what the deck is trying to do, either by dealing damage or gaining life. It’s always gonna suck for this deck when other decks hit Chaos on Fields of Summer, but at the same time the life gain synergizes so well with what we’re doing that it’s worth the risk.

That’s all for now. Enjoy!

Bloodlust

In Magic, when you think of ampires, you usually think mono-Black. Of course, Black get’s all the cool vampire “Lords” like Vampire Nocturnus or Captivating Vampire. However, the Innistrad block allowed vampires to bleed over into Red (pun fully intended!). Now that the block is complete, I found myself wondering if a mono-Red vampire deck was possible. There are definitely enough red vampires to build a deck, but would it be any good?

Here’s a theoretical list I came up with:

4x Stromkirk Noble

4x Bloodcrazed Neonate

4x Falkenrath Exterminator

3x Crossway Vampire

3x Erdwal Ripper

3x Rakish Heir

2x Markov Blademaster

2x Falkenrath Marauder

4x Lightning Bolt

3x Vampiric Fury

3x Volt Charge

2x Blade of the Bloodchief

1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

2x Teetering Peaks

20x Mountain

This deck is the essence of pure aggro. It does not seek to play a long, interactive game. It just wants to hit you with Vampires until you are dead. Blade of the Bloodchief is pretty silly, but it’s on-theme mechanically AND flavorfully, so it’s too perfect not to add. Plus, it’s super-cheap to cast and equip and gives us something to do Turn 1 if we don’t have a Noble in our opening hand.

Volt Charge is also a cutesy trick, as every single creature in the deck has the ability to give itself +1/+1 counters. It’s also a good way to clear a blocker out of the way.

Then there’s Vampiric Fury, which I included just because Red seems to have a lot of good  three-drop Vampires, but not too many two-drops… that said, I think Fury will actually be pretty relevant a lot of the time.

Markov Blademaster should probably be a 3x or 4x, but I wanted to give the other Vampires at 3 CMC a chance before cutting them for the Blademaster, which I already know is quite good.

Planar Deck

Bloodhill Bastion

Edge of Malacol

Feeding Grounds

Grove of the Dreampods

Kilnspire District

Stensia

Sokenzan

Shiv

Turri Island

Undercity Reaches

The choices here are all pretty obvious. Most advance the aggro plan in some way or another. Bloodhill Bastion and Sokenzan let my vampires hit harder AND faster. Kilnspire District, Grove of the Dreampods and Turri Island let me cast them earlier or cheat them out. Undercity Reaches keeps my hand full of gas. Edge of Malacol can slow my attacks to a crawl, but I have a few Haste-y Vampires already, but Malacol artificially charges up my Vampires in the mean time. Stensia is just a gimme.

This deck probably has little chance of winning a 4-way Multiplayer game, but if your opponents all happen to be playing slow-ish decks, you just might pull it off. Unfortunately there isn’t really much of a Plan B. You just have to swing every single turn and hope it works out in the end. But that’s pretty much the modus operandi for Red anyway, right?

If nothing else, this deck should satisfy your bloodthirst.

Enjoy!

Announcement!

I am not doing the remaining three articles on the Planechase II decks. I did the first one with plans to cover all four decks. After starting the articles for two others, I realized my heart just wasn't in it. It is my belief that I only produce readable, worthwhile content when I truly care about what I'm writing.

Thus, I came to the conclusion, after skipping back and forth between the Devour deck and the Cascade deck, that I don't actually like any of the Planechase II decks. That's not to say I dislike the overall product; I like almost all of the newly printed cards, and most of the new Planes and Phenomena look quite fun. I can't wait to get my hands on all four Planechase II decks... but I will immediately begin cannibalizing them for cards for decks I actually WANT to play!

I understand that it might be relevant to some readers' interests that I explore ways to tune-up and improve the prepackaged decks without significantly altering the decks' theme or purpose. However, I just don't have enough interest, personally, in doing so.

I apologize if I disappoint anyone by abandoning this project, but since I haven't gotten any comments or feedback on the first article yet, I'm guessing the majority of you will be doing much the same as me: Cannibalizing the good stuff from the decks, and using the Planar cards to supplement your regular multiplayer decks, be they 60-card or EDH format decks.

In other news, I took apart all of my EDH decks earlier this week. I know, I know... some of them barely got a test drive, and many of them just got significant upgrades courtesy of Avacyn Restored. However, I have a variety of reasons for doing this, one of which is a desire to build even more new decks! I am working on Maelstrom Wander list, as well as a Savra, Queen of the Golgari deck. Once I have those two decks up and running, I'll reevaluate the other lists I took apart, and see if I want to reassemble any of them.

In the mean time, I have grown to miss 60-card Magic somewhat, so if my playgroup shows any interest in taking a brief respite from EDH to enjoy some 60-card shenanigans, I will of course share any decklists I come up with here.

This blog was never meant to be 100% dedicated to EDH, although that is my main focus... it's just that once I and one other member of my group introduced EDH to the other members of our group, it kinda took over completely! I was perfectly fine with that for a while, but I do enjoy being able to play 4 copies of something in a deck now and then. So, my plan is to have a smaller stable of EDH decks - at least two but no more than four - so that I have enough of a card pool left over to build some playable 60 card decks.

Anyway, today is of course the release day for Planechase II, so I will be picking up all four decks right after I get off work this evening... 4:30 cannot come fast enough!

Planechase II Deck Review: Savage Auras

This is the first deck I’m going to review, because I think it will be the easiest one to dissect and analyze. It has a fairly linear, straightforward strategy, which involves playing guys, buffing them with Auras, and swinging with them. Not overly complicated, is it?

So, first off, let’s take a look at the decklist as it appears, straight out of the box.

Creatures

2x Armored Griffin

2x Aura Gnarlid

1x Auramancer

1x Auratouched Mage

1x Bramble Elemental

1x Celestial Ancient

1x Dowsing Shaman

2x Dreampod Shaman

1x Elderwood Scion

1x Kor Spiritdancer

1x Krond the Dawn-Clad

1x Lumberknot

1x Silhana Ledgewalker

1x Thran Golem

Spells

2x Boar Umbra

1x Cage of Hands

2x Felidar Umbra

1x Fractured Powerstone

1x Ghostly Prison

1x Hyena Umbra

1x Indrik Umbra

1x Mammoth Umbra

1x Pollenbright Wings

1x Predatory Urge

1x Quiet Disrepair

1x Rancor

1x Sigil of the Empty Throne

1x Snake Umbra

1x Spirit Mantle

1x Three Dreams

Lands

9x Forest

8x Plains

2x Graypelt Refuge

1x Krosan Verge

2x Selesnya Sanctuary

1x Terramorphic Expanse

1x Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree

Planar Deck

Akoum

Aretopolis

Astral Arena

Edge of Malacol

Grove of the Dreampods

Kessig

Onakke Catacombs

Talon Gates

Chaotic Aether*

Planewide Disaster*

(* = Phenomenon card)

Highlights

With that out of the way, let’s zero in on the brand new cards first, then go over a few key reprints.

The newly printed cards in this deck are:

Dreampod Druid

Elderwood Scion

Krond the Dawn-Clad

Felidar Umbra

Indrik Umbra

And, of course, Fractured Powerstone, which is in every deck.

All five new cards are relatively playable. Krond should be mildly popular in EDH, while the two uncommons are pretty playable in 60-card formats. I plan to use all three in my Jenara Aura deck, but they feel pretty narrow, inhibiting their usefulness outside of dedicated Enchantress decks.

Interesting or exciting reprints in this deck include:

Rancor

Ghostly Prison

Krosan Verge

Rancor and Ghostly Prison are older cards that are a bit hard for new players to find and are usually worth 3 to 4 bucks online. Krosan Verge is just a terrific budget-friendly mana fixer that every casual player should have in his or her arsenal. It’s a bit slow, but in EDH and 60-card Planechase multiplayer matches tend to be slow enough that the Verge is worth it.

Strategy

The core concept of the deck should be pretty obvious. You play some creatures, then turn them into sizeable threats by Enchanting them with various Auras. Hopefully, you’ll draw a Kor Spiritdancer early so that you can keep your hand full of cards, which is going to be important for this deck to be able to consistently apply pressure.

There seems to be a very minor token-making subtheme, which is likely more for defensive purposes than anything. Cards like Dreampod Druid, Bramble Elemental and Pollenbright Wings make 1/1 tokens which are most often going to be your main defensive line, while your Arua-laden Creatures like Elderwood Scion and such will be on the attack.

In case you need defense against Flying creatures, there is Sigil of the Empty Throne, which can easily lead to a major offensive force if it manages to stay on the battlefield long enough.

As with all WotC-made “preconstructed” decks, there is plenty of room for improvement here. Instead of just regurgitating a list that caters to my own tastes and preferences (and budget!), I’ll start by identifying what I feel are the strongest cards, and the weakest links, to give you a more adaptable idea for where to push the deck.

The MVP’s of the deck look to be:

Aura Gnarlid

Dreampod Druid

Elderwood Scion

Kor Spiritdancer

Krond the Dawnclad

Silhana Ledgewalker

Rancor

Indrik Umbra

Felidar Umbra

Spirit Mantle

Sigil of the Empty Throne

The weaker cards include:

Armored Griffin

Dowsing Shaman

Celestial Ancient

Lumberknot

Quiet Disrepair

Mammoth Umbra

Pollenbright Wings

Predatory Urge

Thran Golem and Three Dreams are nice cards, and they are definitely on-theme and appropriate for casual play, but I think they both cost too much for what they do. Three Dreams in particular is a little to slow. I’d rather just have an additional “Enchantress” to draw more cards, rather than a costly tutor.

I’d start cutting the more costly cards like Pollenbright Wings and Thran Golem for more cheap stuff like Silhana Ledgewalker and Rancor. Small, evasive creatures are great here, because you can make ‘em big pretty easily.

Creatures with Hexproof are also great. I love Troll Ascetic in an Aura deck, as he is hard to deal with for opponents without mass removal.

Another notable exclusion her is Auratog. Auratog is great with Auras like Rancor that come back to your hand. You can repeatedly sac Rancor to Auratog to pump him to a huge size, then with your last Green mana, put the Rancor on the ‘Tog to give him Trample.

I mentioned previously that I’d like to see more Enchantress cards. Kor Spiritdancer is great, so I’d like to add 1x or 2x more of her, plus a couple of Mesa Enchantresses. With one or two Enchantresses on the field, you should easily be able to keep 6 or 7 cards in your hand at all times, and by keeping an extra copy of an Enchantress in hand as well, you can very easily come back from a Wrath of God, a big weakness of this deck.

Quiet Disrepair is an understandable choice, as it’s an Aura that acts like a Disenchant… it’s a bit slow and awkward, though. I’d much rather just have a Seal of Cleansing or Seal of Primordium. They won’t trigger the Kor Spritdancer, but they will still trigger Mesa Enchantress, Sigil of the Empty Throne, and Celestial Ancient (if you keep him). More importantly, they let you deal with the problem immediately if it’s an urgent need, or wait until it becomes an issue if you prefer.

Another great idea for this deck is Qasali Pridemage. He’s a creature and an answer all rolled into one. If your opponents aren’t packing too many worrisome Artifacts or Enchantments, he’s not a blank as he can still attack and block and even wear an Aura or two. Plus this already seems like a deck that really wants to just have one big attacker, which the Pridemage’s Exalted ability plays right into.

Two of the most powerful G/W Auras in the game are noticeably absent from this list. I’m talking about Armadillo Cloak and Shield of the Oversoul. Armadillo Cloak can slot right into the deck without fuss, but Shield of the Oversoul is best when attached to a G/W creature, of which there are only a few in this stock list. If you want to add the Shield, I’d recommend adding some cheap G/W dudes like Watchwolf, Kitchen Finks, or the fantastic-with-a-bunch-of-tokens Knotvine Paladin. If you keep, or even bolster, the token-making subtheme, the Knotvine Paladin is a definite 3x or 4x include.

This goes for any of the four decks, but if you’re building this strictly for Planechase use, I’d try to max out the number of Fractured Powerstones you can play. You see, having only one copy doesn’t actually matter in the strictest sense. You could be tapping it for 1 colorless and using that colorless to roll the planar die, or you could just tap it to roll the planar die – the point is, it doesn’t actually save you any mana at all, unless you have 2 or more copies on the table. That’s when it starts to become a bargain. So you’re better off either maxing it out at 4x copies, or removing it altogether.

Spirit Mantle is pretty fantastic, and I think it deserves to be a 2x.

Almost all of the Umbras are playable, only Mammoth Umbra seems to be overcosted for its effect. That said, if you manage to work in 3x or 4x Shield of the Oversoul and some more G/W guys, I think the Umbras lose a lot of their value, and I’d just replace them with Rancors and Armadillo Cloaks.

Cage of Hands is one of the few ways to deal with Creatures, and I’d definitely add more answers. I think a 2 or 3 Journey to Nowhere and a Faith’s Fetters would go a long way to making the deck more multiplayer-viable. Fetters has the bonus utility of being able to shut down Planeswalkers, Equipment, and a host of other potential problems.

Here’s a quick and dirty revised decklist, just to use as a starting point:

2x Qasali Pridemage

2x Aura Gnarlid

1x Auratog

2x Dreampod Druid

1x Elderwood Scion

2x Kor Spiritdancer

2x Mesa Enchantress

1x Krond the Dawn-Clad

1x Silhana Ledgewalker

2x Watchwolf

2x Knotvine Paladin

2x Rancor

2x Armadillo Cloak

2x Shield of the Oversoul

1x Spirit Mantle

2x Journey to Nowhere

1x Cage of Hands

1x Faith’s Fetters

1x Sigil of the Empty Throne

1x Indrik Umbra

2x Felidar Umbra

4x Fractured Powerstone

9x Forest

8x Plains

1x Krosan Verge

2x Selesnya Sanctuary

1x Terramorphic Expanse

This list is still far from “tuned”, and represents an attempt to incorporate all of the ideas I presented above. I would strongly suggest picking which ideas you like best and really focusing on those. Choose the cards that you like best, and try to make them 3x and 4x inclusions. You’ll lose some diversity, but you’ll gain power, consistency, and reliability.

I dropped the land count by 1, because I feel that the increased card-draw this list presents will more than make up for the shortage, plus I cut many of the high-end spells and creatures to significantly lower the mana-curve and speed up the deck quite a bit. The land I cut was Vitu-Ghazi, because I feel it’s too slow and expensive for this deck, and my changes should speed it up enough that Vitu-Ghazi would likely never be relevant. If you find games are going long, it can easily come back in.

Now, let’s look at the accompanying Planar deck again, and see if we can make some adjustments there.

Akoum

Aretopolis

Astral Arena

Edge of Malacol

Grove of the Dreampods

Kessig

Onakke Catacombs

Talon Gates

Chaotic Aether*

Planewide Disaster*

Starting with the Phenomena, neither inclusion really makes sense to me. Planewide Disaster is exactly the kind of effect we don’t want to see! Not only will it kill our men, it’ll likely result in severe card disadvantage if those creatures have auras piled on them. Chaotic Aether is awesome, but seems better suited to the Chaos Reigns deck, which is all about the LOLRANDOM effects of Planechase.

I think I’d trade Chaotic Aether out for Mutual Epiphany. We can’t always rely on our Enchantresses for card-draw. This will help us refill our tanks after a Wrath, and allow us to be more aggressive with our hand early-game. Dump your hand and get as much early damage in as possible!

I’d also swap Planewide Disaster for Morphic Tide. This deck has a token subtheme, giving us opportunity to get the most mileage out of the Tide’s effect. Even more importantly, if we cut Three Dreams (and I recommend doing so), we have a deck that is literally 100% permanents! Meaning, Morphic Tide will always hit and never miss. It’s conveniently worded so that it puts creatures into play first, then Enchantments, so we don’t have to worry about our aura’s having legal targets.

Moving on to the planes, Akoum is obviously a great choice, and we’ll happily keep it. I’d also pull Gavony from the Ninja deck, as Vigilance will be highly useful here, I think. It could come in for Edge of Malacol or Talon Gates. Both have effects that can slow us down, which we don’t really want to do. I’d go with this configuration:

Akoum

Aretopolis

Astral Arena

Gavony

Grove of the Dreampods

Kessig

Onakke Catacomb

Talon Gates

Morphic Tide*

Mutual Epiphany*

I decided to keep Talon Gates because the average CMC is pretty low. There are plenty of 2 and 3 mana spells, so our Suspended stuff should hit relatively quicker than our opponents’.

If we want to bring in some of the original 40 Planes, I’d start with these:

Bant

The Maelstrom

Naya

Goldmeadow

Llanowar

Minamo

Raven’s Run

The Great Forest

One decklist down, three to go…

Enjoy!